The U.S. military played no role in the Israeli operation inside Gaza that killed Sinwar, according to Pentagon officials, who spoke on the matter as Mr. Biden pushed a message that the Palestinian Hamas leader’s death is a “moment of justice” and “an opportunity to seek a path to peace” in Gaza.

While Iran’s foreign minister claimed the opposite on social media — asserting in a post on X Friday that Sinwar’s death will serve as a “source of inspiration for resistance fighters across the region” — Mr. Biden said in remarks during a visit to Germany that the Hamas leader and architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror assault on Israel had “the blood of Americans and Israelis, Palestinians and Germans and so many others on his hands.”

The remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the killing of Sinwar had “settled the score with him,” but stressed that “the task before us [Israel] is not yet complete.”

Sinwar’s death, which reportedly came during a chance encounter this week with an Israeli patrol in southern Gaza, put an immediate and emphatic end to the bloody career of the Palestinian radical movement’s best-known figure. Washington Times Foreign Editor David R. Sands offers an analysis on how the development has also raised fresh questions about which direction the Netanyahu government will take after the security triumph.

The Russia-Ukraine war could end next year on terms favorable to Kyiv if the U.S. and NATO back an ambitious — and, by most accounts, unrealistic — five-point victory plan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week as he outlined a proposal that seemed to fall flat across much of the West.

National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang reports that the plan calls for NATO to immediately extend a formal “unconditional invitation” to Kyiv, provide additional arms and satellite data, and help Ukraine “deploy a comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package” that would force Russia into “an honest diplomatic process” to end the fighting or face the destruction of its army.

Most of the key points mirror wish list items that Mr. Zelenskyy has publicly outlined several other times. Washington and other major alliance powers have long resisted some headline-worthy points, such as the call for Ukraine to immediately be invited into NATO. 

Part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for invading in February 2022 was to keep Ukraine out of NATO. In announcing his plan on Wednesday, Mr. Zelenskyy asserted that a clear signal of NATO membership would show Moscow it’s “headed for defeat.”

Two Chinese companies and a Russian firm have been slapped with U.S. economic sanctions for joint China-based production of long-range attack drones that Russia used in the Ukraine war, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

The sanctions, which also included a Russian national, were the first time Chinese firms were sanctioned by the Biden administration for direct sales of military goods to Russia, specifically the Chinese-design Garpiya attack drone. 

“The Garpiya has been deployed by Russia in its brutal war against Ukraine, destroying critical infrastructure and causing mass casualties,” Treasury officials said in a statement.

China’s goal is to develop global power projection capabilities and expel U.S. influence from the Indo-Pacific, according to a new report by a U.S. Air Force think tank that urges the Pentagon to respond by developing new Air Force weapons that are cheaper, easily replaceable and asymmetric, such as low-cost drones and supersonic cruise missiles that can penetrate China’s defenses.

China’s network-centric warfare should also be targeted by Air Force systems that can disrupt sensor grids on land, sea, air and space, states the “Charting the Course: How the PLA’s Expected Regional and Global Strategies Should Influence the U.S. Air Force’s Lines of Efforts” report published by the Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute.

U.S. Air Force bases in the region, especially in Japan, are vulnerable to Chinese missiles, drones and hypersonic weapons, highlighting the need for better base defenses, the report states, calling for Air Force weapons and systems to move away from expensive fighter aircraft to more survivable high-technology weapons and inexpensive “attritable platforms” that can be lost in battle without severely affecting Air Force power.

Retired CIA officer and Threat Status contributor Daniel N. Hoffman notes that the agency posted instructions last month on social media sites in Farsi — as well as Korean and Mandarin — on a secure means of contact via the internet for Iranians interested in sharing sensitive information with the U.S. government.

“In a public statement, the CIA revealed that ‘people are trying to reach out to us from around the world, and we are offering them instructions for how to do that safely. Our efforts on this front have been successful in Russia, and we want to make sure individuals from other authoritarian regimes know that we’re open for business,’” writes Mr. Hoffman.

With regard to Iran specifically, he writes that the Islamic republic’s “multifaceted threats” to U.S. national security are “blinking red.” The CIA, Mr. Hoffman writes, is “appealing to a few courageous Iranian security, military and intelligence officials who have lost confidence in their country’s decrepit leadership and want to share protected information because Iran directs such serious threats against U.S. national security.”

• Oct 21 — Relearning Escalation Dynamics to Win the New Cold War, Hudson Institute

• Oct 21 — Book Event: “On Xi Jinping” with Ambassador Kevin Rudd, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Oct. 23 — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Europe’s Economic Outlook, Atlantic Council

• Oct. 23 — Explosive Triangle: Israel, Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• Nov. 8-10 — IISS Prague Defense Summit 2024, International Institute for Strategic Studies

• Nov. 22-24 — Halifax International Security Forum

• Dec. 7 — 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute